Lot Details

"Time Exposed" (1991) portfolio is comprised of fifty tri-tone offset lithographs, mounted to wove paper with letterpress embossed borders and full margins. Each image is embossed with the title, date and annotation, respectively. The portfolio was published by Kyoto Shoin Co., Ltd. of Japan, and includes one bonus print of the IBM Courtyard, Tokyo. The fifty-one images comes with the original aluminum portfolio, with the photographs and portfolio all in pristine condition. This famous portfolio encapsulates one of Sugimoto's most well known projects, in which he photographs 50 different views of the world's various oceans and seas, traveling around the world to make pictures that, despite their vastly different geographic origins, at first seem to all be nearly identical, with only slight variations. The captions of each image, however, "Caspian", "Ligurian", "Black", confirm that each is of a very different body of water. Inspired by early 19th century photography as well as Renaissance paintings, the artist achieves an exquisite range of tones in this body of work that reflects his famous love of detail, an exceptional technical ability, and a fascination with the paradox of time.

Hiroshi Sugimoto's photographic images all share a common theme, to freeze time and space, slowing down the act of perception long enough that it becomes a palpable component of his work. Central to Sugimoto’s work is the idea that photography is a time machine, a method of preserving and picturing memory and time. He uses his camera in a myriad of ways to create images that seem to convey his subjects’ essence, whether architectural, sculptural, painterly, or of the natural world and places extraordinary value on craftsmanship, printing his photographs with meticulous attention and a keen understanding of the nuances of silver-print making. Sugimoto has had solo exhibitions at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Osaka (1989), Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1994), Centre International d’Art Contemporain in Montreal (1995), Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (1996), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2000), Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2000), Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2003), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (2006), and Neue National Galerie in Berlin (2008), among other venues. He has also participated in numerous international group exhibitions, among them The Art of Memory/The Loss of History at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (1985), Carnegie International (1991), Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky at the Yokohama Museum of Art and Guggenheim Museum SoHo (1994), Prospect 96 at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (1996), Johannesburg Biennale (1997), International Triennale of Contemporary Art in Yokohama (2001), Moving Pictures (2002) and Singular Forms (2004) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Reality Check at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2008). The artist is represented by Pace Galleries and lives in New York and Tokyo.

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